You already passed the Salesforce Certified Administrator or Platform App Builder exams? Well done! But this doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax now. Holders of these credentials will have to stay up to date on the latest features and functionalities on the Salesforce platform. Earlier this week, Salesforce released the Winter ’18 maintenance exams which each Salesforce certified professional will have to pass in order to attest they are all informed on the latest features. Lots of studying ahead? Fortunately not, Nextview is here to help you getting ready for the maintenance exam in no time!

Blog by: Rogier Maaten & Stef van den Oever

For Administrators:

Emojis in Chatter

One of the latest additions to Chatter is emojis. In the Chatter publisher in Lightning Experience and in Lightning Communities there is a emoji icon visible when creating a post, writing a comment, adding details to a question or answering a question.

The emojis are categorized and note that how emojis look like is determined by your host operating system.

Give dashboards a more prominent place

Dashboards can now be embedded in the Lightning App Builder on a Home Page or an App Page. Embedding a dashboard on a record page is however not possible in the Lightning App Builder.

Adding a dashboard component works just like any other component: drag and drop from the components panel on the left onto the page. If a dashboard is assigned to a section that is too small to show the dashboard, a link to the dashboard will be presented instead.

Enterprise Territory Management’s struck by lightning!

Enterprise Territory Management is now available in Lightning Experience. For configuring this, its is no longer required to switch back to Salesforce classic. Additionally, territories can also be managed in Lightning Experience as well. For example: the assigned territory of an opportunity record can be changed by reps on the opportunity record page and the Assigned Territories related list on Accounts is now also available in Lightning Experience (note that this list is read only).

Collaborative forecasts now configurable in Salesforce Lightning

Besides Enterprise Territory Management, Collaborative Forecasts can now also be configured in Lightning Experience. And forecast users will have more options using Collaborative Forecasts in Lightning Experience. They can:

Jump to the forecast of users they have access to view;

Access Collaborative Forecasts in the Lightning Sales Console;

See quota attainment information;

Adjust their own product family forecast (this feature does not exist in Classic).

If you’re looking for more information on Collaborative Forecasts, this trailhead module sure will help.

Easier collaboration on documents in Salesforce

Quip documents (and spreadsheets) can be added to Salesforce records and to Chatter posts and these documents and spreadsheets can be shared on records, groups and feeds.

In the Lightning Experience a dedicated Quip component is available for records of all objects (apart from the User object) with which users can see the associated Quip documents and sheets and also add or create documents.

Quip is available for Lightning Experience, Classic and Communities and does not need an external file provider.

For Platform App Builders:

Dynamic Lightning Pages

Record pages created by the Lightning App Builder keep getting more dynamic. With filter conditions and logic you can determine whether a component on a Lightning record page is shown or hidden, based on that record’s data! This can be any type of component: standard, custom or AppExchange components.

Improved reports & dashboards charts in Lightning

Some very helpful improvements were made on charts in Lightning Experience:

Line charts now support up to two measures in a dashboard component;

Add Chatter photos to leaderboard components;

Donut charts can display percentage or values;

In line and bar charts the limit for number of displayed groups is 500 instead of 200;

(Stacked) horizontal bar charts can display up to four measures.

More flexibility in sharing files related to records

Previously, a file attached to a record could be viewed by anyone with access to the record. This is no longer the case in Lightning Experience and Communities. The new ‘File privacy’ feature is enabled by default and it set up by adding the File Privacy on Records field to the File page layout with which the file owner (and administrators) can set file access.

Note that a file marked as private in Lightning Experience is also private in Classic.

Easier referencing of Queues in processes

No longer do you need to specify the Salesforce ID of a user or queue in process rules. You can still use the Salesforce ID, but you can also use the name of a user or the label of a queue (this feature is available both in Lightning Experience and in Classic). Just set the type to Queue or User and type the name or label in the value field as in the example below. Much more convenient than finding the ID first!

Flows now available in Lightning Community Pages

Have you created flows to capture data from your customers? You can now embed these into Lightning Community Pages. This is easily done by adding the Flow component onto your page. Once this is done, you can easily configure how the flow component should be displayed and if any values need to be passed on to the flow’s variables. Bear in mind that users cannot resume paused flows in communities, so it is recommended to remove the ‘pause’ button from flows you use on Lightning Community Pages.

Go ahead and take your Winter ’18 maintenance exam

Salesforce is constantly making steps in optimizing its features & releasing new ones – administrators and consultants need to make sure that they are constantly informed on the latest functionalities. After having read the above, you are ready to go ahead and register for the Winter ’18 Release Exam here. For more information, please visit the Salesforce FAQ Winter ’18 Release Exams webpage.

Salesforce and Design Thinking

Interested in learning even more? At our Nextview School, we’re offering a comprehensive and hands-on Salesforce Administration & Design Thinking Essentials course, that ensures your success with your existing Salesforce implementation. This course is uniquely designed to include Design Thinking methodology that will help the participant develop a problem-solving mindset. Find out more here.